Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan (9 page)

Perhaps it is inevitable then that the idea of real love between a man and a woman that my friends and I believed as children came totally from these over-romanticised stories. I’ve since realised that these tales do not, of course, match reality. In the romance films I grew up watching, the elders in the local community helped pave the way for the young lovers to come together – they extol the virtue of two young people in love overcoming all obstacles to be together. These stories are a celebration of love.

Like so many love stories, Nasreen’s involves the boy next door. They actually lived in the same house as many Afghan families do. Nasreen was
discovered by one of our local reporters in Kabul but she didn’t want to speak to her, and insisted she would only talk to me, so I interviewed her down the line from a BBC studio on the local reporter’s mobile phone.

My name is Nasreen and I live in Kabul. I’m about forty years old and have spent much of my life crying and suffering, and here’s why. Have you ever wondered about those women who are married to a man whom they never loved and were never suited to?

When she asked this question I hesitated. I wanted to shout out, ‘Of course I know!’ I knew just how it felt to pretend to be asleep when my husband came to bed so as to avoid having to talk to him.

My husband is sixty years old and I haven’t seen my parents for a long time. When I was thirteen years old we shared a house in Kabul with another family, and although they were Tajik and we were Pashtun, my mother and father got on with them very well and I really loved that family. They had a son who was about eighteen years old and some daughters, too, and sometimes I’d play with them. It was a carefree time. In fact, looking back, it was the happiest time of my life. I would often go to the boy’s mother and she would take care of me in a special way. Her son’s name was Abdullah and he was in love with me, and I used to flirt with him. We were both young. My heart would beat harder when I heard his voice and I would find any excuse to take something to his room. It was easy to fall in love with Abdullah because he was so handsome, and because we were able to spend so much time together
.

The afternoon was a special time for us because most people in Kabul – especially older people – take a nap after praying. I would pretend to my mother that I was going to sleep but as soon as I heard her snoring, I would get up and go to meet Abdullah. I would wait for him under the shade of a tree, and then we would sit leaning against a wall and talk and talk. My love for him was pure, as was his for me
.

And do you know, Zarghuna Jan, Abdullah didn’t ever spend his pocket money on himself. He liked to see me wearing colourful glass bangles so
he spent all his money buying them for me, and I loved every single one of them. They symbolised his love for me and I always took great care of them
.

Nasreen’s voice sounded choked, and then she started crying.

Zarghuna Jan, our love was so innocent. I would only have to look at him and he would gaze back at me, and we knew just how much we felt for each other. He had already told his mother that if she wanted to marry him off then it would have to be to me, because he was in love with me. His mother had agreed to this and that’s why she gave me special treatment, because she had already begun to see me as a future daughter-in-law. It was easy for her, wasn’t it?

I didn’t understand what she meant.

It was easier for her because it was her son who was in love, not her daughter. For boys to have these feelings is something for a mother to be proud of and celebrate. It shows that a boy is maturing, so mothers would make sure other women heard that their son was in love and becoming a man. And just as Abdullah’s mother was full of joy, so too was I blissfully happy. I felt free as a bird and when I imagined Abdullah as my husband it gave me a warm feeling
.

We would meet every afternoon, except on Fridays, when my father, who didn’t sleep in the afternoons like my mother, wasn’t at work. I carried on meeting Abdullah until one day we were spotted by a neighbour’s son, Ghulam. He saw Abdullah and I chatting under the shade of the tree and was jealous of our intimacy, and he began gossiping about us. He told my brother that he’d seen Abdullah and me alone together and that I’d been doing bad things with him, and so my brother began to restrict what I was allowed to do. Even when I told him I was only talking to Abdullah he stopped me from going out in the afternoon. He also told my mother if he saw me again with Abdullah that he would kill me. My brother felt I was causing his honour to be called into doubt and that his standing in the community would be damaged if people thought of him as being a
weak man, whose sister was having a love affair he was unable to put an end to. Days passed. I was no longer able to meet Abdullah under the tree, but we would still see each other in the house. It was enough for us just occasionally to catch a glimpse of each other
.

Even now whenever Nasreen mentioned Abdullah’s name, I could hear an intense desire in her voice and sensed that she still desperately missed him.

I remained happy because I was certain Abdullah’s mother still wanted me to marry her son. I was just waiting for the day when she would come to our rooms and ask for my hand. Then one afternoon, the weather was perfect, it was warm but with a fresh breeze, the sky was clear blue and the birds were singing. It was a perfect day
.

I asked Nasreen if she had met Abdullah under the tree that day, but she said she hadn’t. Instead it was the day Abdullah’s mother had come to her mother and asked for Nasreen’s hand in marriage to Abdullah.

My mother wasn’t blind. She already knew I had feelings for him, but used to try to stop me from going to his family’s rooms and talking to his mother and sisters during the day
.

‘
Listen, my girl, I know you’re still young but you’re also a woman now so be careful not to look at Abdullah. It’s forbidden for you to do anything like that. Do you understand me?’ One day I had confessed that I liked him, and demanded to know what was wrong with feeling that way. In return, she had slapped me hard and told me I was a shameless woman, asking how I could speak like that and saying that women are not allowed to have those kinds of feelings. She then forbade me to see him again. He was a boy, she told me, so he could do whatever he liked and no one would ever gossip about him, but it was different for me because I was a girl and our family could be shamed for ever because of me
.

That day I wept and longed to see Abdullah, but knew it would be impossible because my mother was afraid of my father. She had told me that if my father got to hear about my feelings for Abdullah, then the shame would force him to resolve the matter by killing me
.

I wasn’t surprised when Nasreen told me this because I know of several cases where girls have in fact been killed for loving a man that their family didn’t approve of. Gossip can sometimes get out of control, becoming completely exaggerated, but some men in the family find this hard to understand and feel compelled to defend the family honour nonetheless and prove that they disapprove of shameful behaviour by killing an innocent girl. There have been some instances in which the boy has been killed for having a forbidden love affair, but it’s usually the case that the woman ends up being blamed and punished.

Soon Abdullah’s mother began asking my mother for my hand on behalf of her son, and I started to get scared because she was becoming insistent. But my mother actually became quite comfortable with the situation because this is the way marriages in Afghanistan are normally arranged. The boy’s family comes to the girl’s family, they pay their respects and then ask for the daughter’s hand in marriage. My mother had a kind heart and she knew that I loved Abdullah, so she was pleased that his family had begun to pay their respects to us in this way. She mentioned as much to my father when he came home from work one evening, but he didn’t like what he heard one bit, and when my mother tried to persuade him that they were a respectable family and that their son and his daughter already knew each other he flew into a rage. ‘Just how well does our daughter know this bastard?’ My mother’s voice shook as she told him that although I had obviously seen Abdullah around the house, I’d not actually had any kind of contact with him. But my father was not to be fooled quite so easily
.

‘
Don’t you realise, woman, that we are Pashtuns and they are Tajiks. We don’t belong together at all, so just forget all about this
.’

My mother protested saying she thought marriage would make me – their daughter – happy and that my happiness should count for something
.

‘
Well, it might be the most important thing for you, but people will say that my daughter married the neighbour and probably had an affair with him beforehand. This is what people will say, you silly woman!
’

The more my mother insisted, the more angry my father became until
finally he slapped her. When I heard the commotion I rushed into the room and clung to my mother who was weeping. I was furious with my father for upsetting her so much when she was only defending me
.

The days passed and my love for Abdullah grew. After a week or so, the men in his family came to see my parents and asked for my hand. My father wouldn’t talk to them, but nor would he refuse outright to give them what they wanted. Instead, he called on my uncle to join him in the negotiation process, and together they decided to ask for such an unfeasibly large sum of money in return for my hand that Abdullah’s family would never be able to afford it. My father and uncle couldn’t bear the idea that their daughter, and niece, had decided to love a boy of her own choosing. According to my family I had committed a terrible crime. As Abdullah’s family wasn’t rich, they asked for some time to consider this. But a few days later they returned and said they were prepared to pay the price my father and uncle had set, because their son’s happiness was more important to them than money
.

Nasreen cried throughout telling me her story, and whenever she spoke of her love for Abdullah I could feel her pain. She told me how lucky Abdullah was that his family respected his love for her enough to be prepared to pay a lot of money to see him happy.

But no one in my family really cared about me or my feelings. I was on my own, and even my mother was unable to help me. Instead she found herself being blamed for bringing up a daughter who had brought shame on the family: a daughter who had dared to love the man of her choice. Meanwhile, my father continued to make excuses for the fact that he’d refused to allow me to marry Abdullah. If he had let me marry Abdullah it would have meant that he’d accepted our love for one another, but he just wasn’t enough of a man to do this. He kept using the excuse that Abdullah was not a Pashtun like us, and in the end I just couldn’t bear it any more and demanded to know why he was behaving so unreasonably. My father almost had a fit when he heard his fourteen-year-old daughter challenge him in this way, and began beating me, calling me a prostitute
and berating me for daring to love ‘that boy’. He hit me so hard I had bruises all over my face and my lips were bleeding. My body ached from the blows
.

‘
You, you are a girl and in our culture girls are not allowed to question their father’s authority. Now I am going to make you suffer
.’

Abdullah’s parents must have been able to hear my screams from next door as I was beaten like an animal. My mother wept and pleaded with my father not to hurt me, but father shouted back that it was all her fault. I was her daughter and she had spoilt me
.

In between sobs, Nasreen told me that in our culture fathers are credited with a child’s good behaviour, but if the child does something he doesn’t approve of then the mother will shoulder the blame and also be punished. I tried to hold back my tears as Nasreen continued with her story. I was hoping for a bit of Bollywood magic and a happy ending in which Abdullah would whisk Nasreen away to a place where they could be together for ever, far away from those who would judge or criticise them. Nasreen told me how much pain she endured that day and how there had been bruises and scars all over her body. She had even heard Abdullah and his mother crying through the wall.

The next day my father told me we were going to move to another house. I didn’t realise this idea had already been discussed with my uncle and that behind my back they had made plans for my new life. The next day, my parents began packing up our house and Abdullah and his family watched and wept at my father’s cruelty. To be honest with you, Zarghuna Jan, I will never forgive my father for what he did to me. I don’t care what happens to him and don’t even know where he is now. Yes, we did move to another house, but it was only later I realised they’d done this to separate me from Abdullah. I was naïve. I now know my uncle had advised my parents that they should move unobtrusively so that the neighbours wouldn’t know what was happening. Once we’d moved, he said, a decision could then be made about my future
.

My father had agreed to this move while my mother had no say
whatsoever in the matter. She had given up by this point and no longer told me what was going on. I didn’t blame her, though, because she was in a vulnerable position too. The place we eventually moved to was a long way away from Abdullah. I missed him terribly and every day I’d take out one of his bangles from its box and look at it, admiring the coloured glass in the light: red, green, blue, yellow. Each bangle carried the memory of him and I cherished each one as a precious token of his love
.

A few days after arriving at our new home, I noticed that people kept visiting our house, but I was too miserable at being away from Abdullah and too preoccupied with praying he would come and rescue me to pay much attention. I thought my father’s anger with me had subsided and was even hoping he would change his mind and let me marry Abdullah, but this was all just wishful thinking. I had failed to understand my father fully. In his eyes, I had committed a crime by falling in love and he was planning to punish me for it. I should have guessed what was coming because my father had never really spoken to me in the kind way that fathers normally do to their children. He was always angry with me and treated me badly. I don’t understand why God allows men who don’t care about women and girls to have families. I don’t think my father even loved his own mother. He was always cruel to women
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